


rolling wave

by naeildo



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Mentions of alcohol, just two silly girls, really brief mention of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2020-01-23 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18556705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeildo/pseuds/naeildo
Summary: Sana is in transition. Dahyun is something like a panacea.





	1. Chapter 1

  
This is the point where Sana says with the mix of exasperation and teasing that she's perfected: "there are so many sounds you guys have that we don't, you know?"  
  
What happens next: her hand rests on the other person's knee. They laugh a little, and try to assuage Sana on how good her Korean is and how she's even better than some of the people they've met - of course, just enough flattery to get into her pants. Sana brings up one deal or another, her other arm brushing down her companion's wrist. They talk a bit more, Sana downing one glass to match three. She calls for separate taxis for them and then goes home with a splitting headache, staring out the window at the neon lights that flicker on, an old song playing on the radio.  
  
Except the girl in front of her just stares back, eyes wide, an unsure smile on her face. Sana has been here for a year or so, and Dahyun seemed at first no different from every boy or girl she's met - reserved at first, then pried open quickly with careful smiles. Now, she raises her hand up and palms at her violet hair, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.  
  
"I'm sorry," Dahyun says, and Sana tries not to let her confusion show.  
  
"There's no need to be sorry," she recovers, her hand closing over Dahyun's knee again, and Dahyun jerks back like she's been struck.  
  
"Sorry," Dahyun says again, in a rush of air. "This is just - my first business dinner, and I'm just sorry that you have to deal with me, and my father is going to kill me. I even memorized some key words for today but it's just," she gestures at her head, "all gone now."  
  
Sana cocks her head. Dahyun's pale cheeks go bright red - from the alcohol or embarrassment Sana can't be sure of. Probably both.  
  
"Shit," Dahyun laughs nervously, cheek pressed into her shoulder, because Sana is staring at her in a different way now, curious and a little fascinated. "I shouldn't have said that, right?"  
  
Sana nods, and can't help the smile that fights its way onto her face. It's small but discernible, and Dahyun ducks her head down again, staring at her feet.  
  
"Sorry," Dahyun mutters, for the third time this evening. Sana thinks she doesn't have to be.  
  
  
◺  
  
  
The news came on a Wednesday. Sana was making tea for her grandmother in the kitchen, and the ding had rung throughout the house because she'd forgotten to mute her phone.  
  
"Has your friend Mimi broken her leg again?" Her grandmother asked, because she loved Sana and sticking her nose in Sana's business, and Sana loved that about her.  
  
"Her name is  _Momo_ ,  _baba_ ," Sana corrected lightly, laughing, rounding the kitchen counter and picking up her phone. It was an email from the company, and Sana's heart fell to her stomach to the beat of the the tea kettle whistling.  
  
"Is ityour friend  _Momo_ then," her grandmother said, a light hand on Sana's shoulder as she passed to retrieve the kettle.  
  
"Not really," Sana offered, daring to say little else for fear of bursting into tears.  
  
  
◺  
  
  
The next time they meet is in the daytime, undoubtedly more prudent considering Dahyun's low alcohol tolerance.  
  
Dahyun has chosen a quaint coffeeshop nestled in the heart of Itaewon, and Sana follows the instructions on her phone all the way to the entrance. Dahyun is already sitting in a corner seat, chewing on her nails. For what it's worth, that night hadn't gone badly at all. Dahyun had pulled herself together after stuttering for a good five minutes, but there were still details to iron out that they both thought to leave for another day.  
  
Dahyun is already standing up as Sana makes her way to their table, her hand stuck out awkwardly across the maple-wood furnish. Sana doesn't take it.  
  
"Hi," she says instead, placing a hand on Dahyun's sleeve, and watches the blush she'd expected creep up her cheeks. Dahyun lowers her hand and clears her throat, tucking her skirt under her thighs as she sits down.  
  
"Do you want to get some drinks? I've read that the potted plant tea here is very good - they ship the tea leaves in from a forest in Japan or something -" Dahyun pauses, eyes skipping over Sana's features. "Um, which you can probably read..."  
  
Dahyun pushes the menu across the table-top, and it's mostly in Japanese, with a few helping words in Korean here and there. Watching the server at the other table preparing tea with rapt concentration, Sana realizes for the first time that this is the cafe Momo used to frequent when she was homesick in Korea. The name had sounded vaguely Japanese, but there are cafes with Japanese clothes all around the area with tea that tastes like muddy water. It's... a thoughtful choice. Dahyun must have done her research.  
  
It's not that there haven't been clients who've brought her to authentic (expensive) Japanese restaurants before, but sitting here opposite Dahyun with a head of faded hair, peering at her with bright eyes, Sana feels something shift not entirely uncomfortably inside her chest.  
  
"Thank you," she decides. Her fingers brush Dahyun's own on the table lightly, deliberately, and Dahyun tenses but doesn't flinch. Her features settle into a soft constellation. "Trust that I mean it."  
  
  
◺  
  
  
Adjusting to Korea wasn't  _impossible_. Sana is attractive, something she's known all her life, and she's good at reading non-verbal cues. At some point, she'd found that that was all that was really required. But there still is the occasional slip of the tongue, the times she wakes up in her room and can't comprehend the language on her phone screen; the moments where her colleagues slip into dialect and Sana is left to flounder, quietly, hands tucked neatly in her lap.  
  
It still feels uncomfortable, more than a year in. Sana has always been used to challenges, and new things, and brighter things, but the transfer felt so much like having the rug pulled out from under her feet.  
  
_Sounds like a shit deal_ , Momo had said. Sana was to move within the next month. She was also staring at a four-fold salary increase.  
  
"Didn't you always want me to drive you around in those foreign cars?"  
  
Momo flopped over onto the arm of Sana's couch. "I like Korea."  
  
Sana twisted the pen cap with her teeth. "Okay. Thanks for sharing."  
  
Momo was quiet for a long time, so long that Sana thought she might have fallen asleep, arm flung over her eyes.  
  
"I think I like you much more."  
  
  
◺  
  
  
On impulse, Sana goes to a yoga class near her place.  
  
There was a brochure pasted on the windows of one of the chicken shops down the street from where her apartment is, and Momo's been nagging at her to at least try out something that isn't pressing weights at the gym.  
  
The building is nondescript, tucked away in a small alley, and the light is fading outside by the time Sana climbs up the stairs. The brochure had a coupon attached for a free three-week trial, so Sana fishes for it in her bag as she heads towards the counter, a small wooden block set up in front of a room with mirrors.  
  
"Good evening," the girl at the counter doesn't greet as much as drone. She has a nice, dull smile that makes Sana want to make her laugh, and Spongebob-themed nails, which means she definitely has a sense of humour she's not showing.  
  
"Hi," Sana says, and then, like an idiot, clumsily drops her coupon onto the floor. When she turns around, a hand is outstretched, ticket resting in the middle of its palm.  
  
"Thanks," Sana says, sparing its owner a cursory glance. Her hair is a shade of dark green, tied up into a ponytail, and she has the  _palest_  skin Sana has ever seen, and she -  
  
And she's Dahyun.  
  
"Oh," Sana says, mid-turn. Her ears are turning red as she hands her coupon over. "Sorry about that."  
  
  
✈  
  
  
Dahyun, Sana finds out by the second lesson, is really good at yoga.  
  
It's some kind of special yoga that requires them to hang upside down in the air, and Sana feels like she wouldn't even subject herself to this if someone paid her. Still, Dahyun is coaching her into position, and Sana tries her best to follow, Dahyun's warm hands prying at her limbs like plasticine.  
  
After class, Dahyun is rolling up her equipment when Sana taps her on the back.  
  
Sana pulls her bag strap further up her shoulder, weight on one hip. She hopes her attempt to look nonchalant is working. "Dinner?"  
  
  
  
  
Dahyun outside of a business context is, Sana finds, different. She walks straighter, wears baggy Adidas sweatpants, and smiles back at Sana without reservation. They find a Western-Japanese fusion restaurant further down the road, and Dahyun chooses it because of the crowd that's waiting outside. When they get in, Sana orders a water, and Dahyun gets soda. It's nice.   
  
"Have you been doing this for awhile?"  
  
Dahyun pops a piece of hamburger steak into her mouth. "Yoga?"  
  
"Mmhm."  
  
"A year and a half, maybe?" The younger girl pauses, seeming to be deciding on whether to continue. "Ever since I hurt my back."  
  
Sana scans Dahyun's face for what to do next, but it's relaxed and somewhat blank. "I'm sorry."  
  
"I used to dance in this street crew," Dahyun continues, and Sana nods, meeting Dahyun's eyes. "Did a bad somersault and landed sideways."  
  
"And yoga helps?"  
  
Dahyun's sawing away at her steak still, like they're just talking about the weather and not her back. "It's nice," Dahyun says, finally. She flashes Sana a small smile when she looks up, and Sana finds that her throat is a little dry when she speaks.  
  
"I hope this isn't weird -" she says, and Dahyun laughs. The way Dahyun processes embarrassment is different, Sana realizes. Sana lets it take over her like a storm until it passes entirely, but Dahyun swallows it, slowly and gently, until it becomes a weapon of her own. Disarms the other party. Dahyun is doing it right now.  
  
"I should be the one saying that," the younger girl says. "First impressions are hard to shake, but I promise I'm more competent than I look."  
  
"And I," Sana smiles into her cup, thinking about Dahyun untangling her from the mess of limbs she'd made of herself, "promise I'm not usually this bad at hand-eye coordination."  
  
  
  
After they part ways, Sana walks past the dingy Seven-Eleven and back to the yoga center. She signs up for ten more classes.  
  
  
✈  
  
  
Japan still calls to Sana like a siren.  
  
The ache doesn't get any smaller, though it does get easier to deal with over time. Her family calls once a week, twice when things are particularly tough. Sometimes Sana sits in bed and watches three episodes of Sailor Moon instead of writing up a report, and sends Momo emojis that could mean anything and nothing at all. At some point she changes her phone language to Korean, and it's a little weird sometimes but it starts sticking. All the little things.  
  
She keeps going for yoga classes, and dinners with Dahyun, and there's a space in her chest that grows and grows, dangerously so. Dahyun is thoughtful, and funny, and sweet, and keeps uncovering more and more lego cafes after finding out that Sana was a sucker for them. Dahyun texts her in the morning commenting on the emojis in her Kakaotalk profile, and downloaded LINE to access extra sticker packs. Sana doesn't want to think too much about it, but there are nights where she's stuck staring at the ceiling awaiting sleep that feel different, and lonelier, and scarier, and Sana wonders when she left her heart right open for the taking.  
  
  
✈  
  
  
"Hypothetically," Sana pitches, "what are the ethics of fraternizing with a client?"  
  
Nayeon looks up from the bean paste noodles she's slurping on. There's black paste smeared across the corners of her mouth. "Bad idea. Things turn ugly, deal goes South, lots of crying and eating out of convenience store ramen cups at night."  
  
"That sounds oddly specific," Sana says.  
  
"I had a friend," Nayeon returns, not entirely convincingly.  
  
"Well," Sana continues, "what if it's the hypothetical client's very imaginary daughter?" Nayeon stops eating. Sets her chopsticks down.  
  
"Is this about Kim Dahyun?"  
  
Sana chokes on her water. "What?"  
  
"So it  _is_ ," Nayeon's voice rises. "Sana, she's a nice girl!"  
  
"Okay, and fraternizing would be like,  _good_  for our long-term prospects, right?"  
  
"No!" Nayeon half-shouts. The  _ahjusshi_  beside them throws them a dirty look. "Ugly, South, Crying! Ramen Cups!"  
  
"Very oddly specific," Sana says, again, and Nayeon eats the only gyoza Sana has left out of spite.  
  
  
✈  
  
  
**From: Kim Dahyun (Hanyang Breweries)**   **/ 17:30**  
_unnie_ , how do you feel about music?  
  
**From: Kim Dahyun (Hanyang Breweries) / 17:31**  
sorry, i realized that was way too vague..  i know it sounds weird, but i have a piano recital tonight and an extra ticket because a friend bailed... and i know you're free tonight because yoga was postponed, right?  
  
Sana doesn't know a thing about music besides that violin concert she once got invited to where one of her best friends was playing. It was awful. There's a pile of unfinished work on her desk that she'd been planning on clearing tonight. Sana picks up her phone from the table top.  
  
**To: Kim Dahyun (Hanyang Breweries)** **/ 17:32**  
woah! i had no idea you even played the piano ^^  
  
**To: Kim Dahyun (Hanyang Breweries)**   **/ 17:32**  
but would love to come! send details :) i'll be there  
  
  
  
Sana spends the train ride to the venue googling  _meaning of flowers_  and wondering how big a bouquet is appropriate for someone you've met through yoga and/or a business transaction.  
  
_Yellow roses are a symbol of friendship. Gift them to a friend you appreciate!_  
  
Okay. Symbol of friendship. They're friends, Sana thinks, and ignores the ache in her chest.  
  
  
✈  
  
  
Sana collects the ticket at the counter and heads into the performance hall, dropping her flowers off at the reception. It's huge, and kind of intimidating. She takes a seat next to a man in an incredibly well-coiffed suit and waits for the performance to begin.  
  
If Sana were to be honest, she falls asleep halfway into the programme, only jolts awake when she hears the MC say  _Kim Dahyun_. Dahyun is dressed in a light yellow dress, fitting nicely over her shoulders. Dahyun has so many faces, Sana realizes again, watching the way Dahyun glides towards the piano, head held high.  
  
There's something that Sana feels while Dahyun is playing that has very little to do with the music and a lot to do with the way Dahyun closes her eyes once in a while, losing herself in the feeling of the keys under her hands. The way her shoulders set, the assured posture when she leans forward, and the small smile that jumps at the corners of her mouth. Something like a symphony.  
  
  
  
Sana's been waiting outside the hall for a good half an hour when Dahyun bustles out of the doors, looking frantically around for - for her, maybe? Then Dahyun is barreling into a girl's arms -- a girl with a head of bleached short hair, and another girl standing awkwardly beside them, holding onto a huge bouquet of flowers.  
  
Sana looks down at the small collection of yellow roses in her hands, and when she looks back up, Dahyun is waving at her to come closer. Her feet move before she's even registered it, and soon she's standing in front of Dahyun. Up close, she can see the sweat plastered across her forehead and the baby hairs that stick along with them when Dahyun looked impossibly put-together from far away. It's cute, and if Sana's stomach turns, she ignores it.  
  
"Hi," Sana says.  
  
"Hi," Dahyun replies, eyes flickering to the roses in Sana's hands. "Um, guys, this is Sana? My yoga friend?" Dahyun tries, and to Sana's surprise, something unpleasant flashes in blonde girl's eyes.  
  
"And Sana, this is Chaeyoung," the blonde girl gives the smallest of nods, "and Tzuyu," taller girl nods too. "They're-"  
  
"Her best friends," Chaeyoung says, a little too pointedly for a reason that Sana can't figure out yet. Still, she puts on her most winning smile.  
  
"Nice to meet you," Sana puts out her hand, and Chaeyoung doesn't take it.  
  
  
✈  
  
  
The four of them head for a barbeque place after Dahyun's done changing, and Sana  _swears_  Chaeyoung spends the entire walk there glaring daggers at her.  
  
Over dinner, there isn't much to do besides small talk -- there's no alcohol because Dahyun doesn't want anyone to get drunk or miss the train home, and Sana is too unfamliar with Tzuyu, who seems open but has an accent of her own, and Chaeyoung, who seems to be trying to stonewall Sana with her meat skewers: her elbow has made an unfriendly appearance between Dahyun and Sana every time they were about to get into an actual conversation.  
  
When the clock hits midnight, Dahyun decides that it's all time for them to go home, and Sana ends up lingering with Tzuyu outside the shop while they wait for Dahyun and Chaeyoung to return from the toilet. Tzuyu has her hands in her pockets and a bright checkered scarf wrapped around her neck.  
  
Tzuyu is - really tall, Sana thinks, and unusually quiet. Which is why Sana startles when Tzuyu starts to speak.  
  
"I'm from Taiwan," she says. "If you were wondering."  
  
Sana was, but it's not polite to say it, and Sana senses that it's a big step - Tzuyu opening up like this. She puts on her biggest smile, leaning in closer. "I'm from Japan," Sana offers, hand on Tzuyu's arm. The streetlights are barely illuminating either of their faces, but Sana can see something flicker across Tzuyu's face.  
  
"Dahyun's mentioned that," Tzuyu says.  
  
_Dahyun talks about me to her friends_ , Sana's brain registers. "Oh," she says. And then, lamely, "um, cool."  
  
Tzuyu lets out a small smile at this. This is manageable, Sana thinks: she isn't inscrutable, just a little shy. She doesn't hate Sana the way Chaeyoung seems to. "Do you want to know what else she says?"  
  
_Yes_ , Sana thinks.  _This is a horrible idea_ , Sana thinks.  _Yes_ , Sana thinks.  
  
"I don't know if that'd be appropriate," Sana's traitorous mouth says instead.  
  
Tzuyu is staring at her oddly now, and Sana wonders if she's passed some sort of test.  
  
Just as Tzuyu's about to speak, Chaeyoung and Dahyun come bundling back out of the shop, engaged in what seems to be some kind of argument under their breaths.  
  
"Are we ready to go?" Sana asks.  
  
Dahyun looks up from where she was pressed to Chaeyoung, and sends the other girl a look that Sana can't read at all. It looks harsh on Dahyun's face, the first time Sana's ever seen anything like that pass across her features. Chaeyoung presses fingers around Dahyun's wrist once, and even from here Sana can tell it's strong.  
  
"Yes," Dahyun says curtly, moving over to where Sana is. She doesn't look back at Chaeyoung. "We're taking the bus in the other direction. See you guys," she pauses when Tzuyu opens her arms to give her a hug, and her features turn soft again as she leans in.  
  
"Take care of yourself," Tzuyu tells her.  
  
  
  
✈  
  
  
"So.... I didn't know you were a pianist," Sana tries, breaking the odd silence they'd fallen into since boarding the bus. Sana has expected her to be a little tired after the day's events, but it's still unusual that Dahyun isn't stringing her along into some wayward topic or another. She's been staring out the window the whole time at the little bit of snow that the sky's managed to squeeze out today, and at this she turns back to Sana with a small smile on her face.  
  
"I grew up playing it," Dahyun says, finally. Her face turns into the one she does when she's going to make a joke, and her gaze flicks back to the window. "One of my countless talents."  
  
Sana's about to probe further when Dahyun places a hand over her own. It's still cold from the time they spent outside, and something about this feels different, like Dahyun's making a request.  
  
"I'm sorry, I know this is a little... rude, but I just don't feel like talking today."  
  
"It's okay," Sana says instinctively, because Dahyun's done enough apologizing for a lifetime. "I don't mind at all."  
  
"Can you -" Dahyun's eyes are soft, and bright, and they're looking right into the little parts of Sana that she's tucked away and hidden from the light. Something in Sana's chest is ringing like an alarm. "Can you tell me about Osaka?"

 

 

Dahyun gets off the bus first, and Sana doesn't really know how to react when she presses a soft kiss to Sana's cheek, so quick and gentle that Sana could have missed it.

"Thank you for coming."

Her hand lingers on the fabric of Sana's jacket, and Sana is about to say something - anything, everything - before Dahyun seems to come to her senses. She hurries off, tapping her card in a flurry and walking with a determination that Sana hasn't quite seen from Dahyun. She doesn't look back through the window to wave like she usually does, speeding away into the alley behind the bus stop.

 

 

 **To: Kim Dahyun (Hanyang Breweries)**   **/ 01:50  
**thank you for having me <3

Sana falls asleep with an ache behind her eyes, like something's shifted imperceptibly in the life she's built up for herself here. In the morning, there's a bunch of notifications from her chats, a text from Nayeon reminding her to bring the sandwiches they wanted to try, and a reply from Dahyun. It really shouldn't make Sana's face grow hot like this, but everything is weird and off-kilter here, and if Sana's holding on to this more than she should, no one can really blame her.

 **From: Kim Dahyun (Hanyang Breweries)**   **/ 08:20  
**always :)

  
  
✈  
  
  
When Momo asks her how Korea is, Sana doesnt think before saying that it's nice. Sana has her hair pulled back in a ponytail, the face mask still marinating. She's not supposed to be talking, she knows, but life isn't perfect and neither will her skincare routine be.  
  
"Nice?" Momo asks. Sana doesn't miss the derision in her voice. "The last time I asked you said you wanted to fall into a coma and never wake up." She disappears off screen, and Sana hears some aggressive rustling, which is probably Momo reaching for the last cookie in the bag. "What about it's nice?"  
  
Sana knows why she's blushing. She runs through a list of things in her head that Korea has that Japan doesn't, and it really seems to narrow down to a few things. "The people here are nice," she says, finally, and Momo's snort blasts through her speakers.  
  
"Singular or plural?"  
  
"Shut up," Sana says. Momo's face is twisted into a small smile when she reappears, and Sana mimes kicking her through the screen.  
  
  
✈  
  
  
Somewhere between the time they left the restaurant and walked over to the  _bingsu_ place, Sana works up the courage to ask if Dahyun wants to head over to her house. It's not far from where they are, and it's cold out, and Sana has a whole cupboard of hot chocolate, and... Dahyun is looking at her with an expression that Sana hasn't seen before.   
  
"I have to go home," Dahyun says. There's something in her voice that shakes, and Dahyun looks down at her feet. Sana does too, and the tips of her converses are pressed together in a V. Sana fights the urge to move closer.  
  
"Oh," she says instead. "Is everything alright?"  
  
Dahyun's still looking down at the ground. First sign that she's lying. "Yes," she says. Her voice is soft.  
  
"Are you sick anywhere?" Sana tries, stepping closer, and Dahyun takes as many steps back.  
  
" _Unnie_ ," Dahyun says, and the steel that's entered her voice is surprising. Sana takes her hand away from Dahyun's arm.  
  
"Did I say something wrong just now? Or-"  
  
"I think you're a great person," Dahyun says. And Sana's heart should be soaring right now, but Dahyun's face says that there's a  _but_ , and Sana thinks about the way Chaeyoung and Tzuyu had looked at her, and about Dahyun's back, and the dance crew, and the parts of her she's hidden away from Sana so cleanly, so methodically. Was she reading the signs wrong?  
  
"I really like you, and I know you're just toying with me, so I would  _really_  not like to get attached, and I  _really_  don't want to wake up in the morning and see you gone." Dahyun doesn't conclude so much as trail off, and Sana feels a flash of heat shoot up her spine when Dahyun looks back up. "I'm not an idiot, _unnie_."

_Oh_.  
  
She reaches out a tentative hand to curl around Dahyun's wrist. Dahyun flinches, but it feels so different from four months ago, when Sana was the one kicking Dahyun's heart around like putty. Now Dahyun has her hands around Sana's own, makes Sana's chest ache almost violently when she meets her gaze.  
  
"Are you staying? After your contract is up?"  
  
Sana feels like Dahyun's pressed at a particularly raw spot in her armour. Blindsided her, the way she has since day one. "Dahyunnie, I - I don't know."  
  
Dahyun's shoulders fall. Sana wants to fix this, but it's not as easy as a yes or no, and Sana wants to say  _I've been thinking of staying because of you_ , but it's not right to if she doesn't follow through.  
  
"But trust me when I say," Sana presses, "that the last thing that I would dream of is toying with you."

Dahyun shakes her head.  
  
"Nothing has to change," Dahyun says. Her voice is low, and fragile, and Sana feels like she's just broken something wonderful. "We're doing well as we are now. We have fun at dinner, and yoga, and then we go home and lead our own lives." Sana has spent enough time with Dahyun to know that she doesn't mean it - the telltale signs are all there: the way her fingers are furled tight by her side into fists, the tension in her jaw. But she's done to much taking that it would be selfish not to yield.  
  
So Sana says: "okay." Even if it isn't, really. Lets Dahyun fumble in her pocket for her phone, the other hand stuck out to flag down an incoming taxi.  
  
"Okay."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sana and dahyun take one step forward and two steps back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i took so long to finish this that i had to go back and reread the first chapter a few times just to remember what happened before this asdjhsad... please let me know if there are any inconsistencies... 
> 
> \+ thank you so much for all the really really kind comments, i read them often to motivate myself to finish this chapter, so this is really your work!! i hope you'll like it

_"I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.”_  
  
  
➼  
  
  
Sana wakes up in the middle of her living room carpet with her socks still on, rolled halfway down and bunched up above her ankles. Against all better judgment, she lays there without getting up and allows herself a while to let the feeling of abject failure sink in, seep quietly into her bones.  
  
For all the excitement that Sana's chased in her life, she's always had plans - learned to regulate her dreams and achievements, took them step by step. Even her first boyfriend in high school was something like a rung in a long ladder, and Sana had brushed off the heartbreak she was supposed to feel quickly following their breakup. Until Dahyun threw her plans off balance, and Sana had been adjusting them to make space for the younger girl without even really registering it. Not enough space, evidently.  
  
As if on cue, her phone screen lights up in the corner of her eye, and Sana palms for it beside her, lifts it in front of her face to read the notification.  
  
**From: Annoyeon / 10:22**  
you up?  
  
The phone buzzes again, bringing aftershocks from Sana's headache the previous night.  
  
**From: Annoyeon / 10:22**  
please don't let me down... i even bought us those little protein shake packages! 2 for 1  
  
Ever since she'd started yoga, Sana's made a habit of going on morning runs with Nayeon on Saturdays, and they've tried not to renege too much on that promise just because Nayeon has been increasingly paranoid about developing a beer belly at the ripe age of 25 and Sana... wants to have enough stamina to hang in the air longer. All that feels kind of stupid and futile now, but the world has to spin on. Sana considers briefly what Dahyun could be doing now: having breakfast with a friend, practicing the piano, finishing up that assignment she'd been complaining about over dinner. In the spaces between that, maybe Sana could be crossing her mind.  
  
She places a hand flat against the surface of her coffee table and pulls, sitting up to face the sunlight leaking through her blinds. She  _really_  needs to scrub the smell of alcohol from her skin.  
  
**To: Annoyeon / 10:25**  
see you in 30 ^_^  
  
  
  
  
Nayeon's waiting at the foot of her block by the time Sana heads out, and she's dressed unusually preppily today, a pink hairband wrapped around her forehead, complete with bright pink Nike bands over her wrists. Despite feeling like hell opened up and spat her out, Sana can't help the laugh that bubbles up.  
  
"What's with the get-up?"  
  
Nayeon, predictably, gives Sana her best offended look. "Exercise can be glamorous too, you know."  
  
"Who said that?"  
  
"Me," Nayeon says, gesturing to her head, which Nayeon often claimed held her big brain. Sana had yet to see any verifiable proof. "They were on sale, for the record." On any other day, Sana would have pressed for a set of her own as well, but even these seem like things Sana would never use, maybe put in her drawer and contemplate once or twice before tucking them back in.  
  
"Right," Sana says, and entertains a fond thought about how Nayeon is oblivious to the light she brings to her life. She starts steering them in the direction of the nearby park, hands planted on Nayeon's shoulders. "Let's get going so we can have lunch on time, ms  _glamour_."  
  
  
➼  
  
  
In the days following the - incident, Sana jumps at every new notification, but it's never Dahyun. The picture of cartoon tofu she used to see at the top of her Kakaotalk list gets pushed to the bottom, and Sana pins the conversation out of impulse, the way she does most things concerning Dahyun. Sana spends the last moments awake with the conversation open, staring at the empty space and willing herself to close it. Types in something and deletes. Dahyun wouldn't want an apology right now. Dahyun wouldn't want anything except to be left alone.  
  
Momo doesn't offer consolation as much as sits with her in silence across the line, because there's no real way out of this that won't hurt Sana - and there  _is_ one that won't hurt Momo, but Momo hasn't mentioned herself even once, which just makes Sana feel even worse.  
  
"Do you think I was playing with her feelings?"  
  
There's an old song playing in the background, probably Hana her new obsession with the 90s bleeding into Momo's life, as most of her sister's new and fleeting loves are wont to do. Momo cocks her head, eyes closed in thought.  
  
"Not intentionally," she says, finally, and Sana can't help feeling chastised, the image of Chaeyoung looking warily at her floating to the forefront of her brain. Shit.  
  
"That... still sucks," Sana decides.  
  
Momo breaks a cracker into half. "You gonna apologize?"  
  
Sana flops down onto her bed. This feels even worse than a breakup, and nothing had even really happened yet, objectively. The most there ever was was Sana hovering a little too long in Dahyun's personal space and that one, dreamlike moment on the bus, but even that was on the very fringe of anything even remotely resembling a relationship.   
  
"I don't know," Sana allows herself to say, finally. Admit that she's lost. "I don't think she would want to hear it if my actions don't say the same thing."  
  
The music has stopped. Momo is peering beadily at her through the screen, and there's something about the intuitions Momo has about Sana that would be a little unnerving if she didn't love Momo so much. Maybe it's still unnerving. Had Sana envisioned herself falling in love in Korea? She doesn't remember the last time that word really came to mind so easily, the way thoughts of Dahyun cotton into it:  _love, love, love_. It's such a terrifying feeling.  
  
"You really do like her," Sana hears Momo say, after a while. Sana lets herself deflate.  
  
"I do." The plain truth. She lays her arm over her eyes, and everything goes comfortably dark.  
  
"Sana?"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"No offense, but you're kind of fucked."  
  
  
➼  
  
  
Nayeon is running next to Sana when she lets out: "I met someone."  
  
They're at that part of the foliage where it's too near the end to stop, but Sana nearly does, has to force her legs to continue working. "You  _what_?"  
  
Sana feels the heat creep up her cheeks, mingling with the red flush that was already there from physical exertion. She shouldn't be feeling this indignant - it's Nayeon's tale to tell, and there was no  _obligation_ , but Sana still feels more hurt than she'd wanted to. After all, Nayeon had earned her trust in the way they'd shared their woes over drinks and in half-standing tucked-away chicken houses and  _gopchang_  shops, and Sana thought Nayeon would have felt close enough to tell her.  
  
As if reading her thoughts, Nayeon smiles and nudges at Sana's shoulder, gums showing. "You're one of the first to know, Minatozaki. Don't get sulky on me." Nayeon lets them jog for a little more, her smug face watching Sana's features shuffle through a series of expressions before finally settling on mild embarrassment.  
  
"Oh," Sana says, tries to think of a question to throw the ball back into Nayeon's court. Nayeon's snuck up on her, hooking an arm around her shoulder that forces them to slow to an awkward half-jog. A couple in matching neon shirts jog past, and Sana gives them a small helpless smile before turning her attention to Nayeon's face looming large in front of her own. "How did you meet?"  
  
"We met at the driving centre," Nayeon answers, immediately, and Sana can't help the curious noise she makes. She knows Nayeon has failed three times now, and would be horrified if this someone were her driving instructor. "She was just there to like, renew her license, and I just failed  _again-_ "  
  
Sana recalls the string of video messages that Nayeon had sent her, eyes puffy and cheeks red, and can't help but laugh. "She saw you like that and still wants to date you?  _Daebak_."  
  
_"Yes_ , actually," Nayeon insists, indignant, letting go of Sana now and falling back in pace. "She sat beside me and told me she sobbed like that too."  
  
Sana fixes her with a look. "Okay, she said she cried a bit at home. Let me embellish!"  
  
"So is this an admiring her from far and thinking about the ten minutes you had together kind of thing or-"  
  
"And then she gave me her  _number_ , on this fancy little namecard that said  _Park Jihyo_ , Managing Director," Nayeon continues, "and we met at this cafe, and I was obviously wearing my cute-but-not-too-much get-up, you know, that blue dress that you think makes me look like an urban Mermaid," Nayeon rambles, and then pauses dramatically: less from breathlessness and more in the way that Sana knows she's trying to build tension. Sana rolls her eyes. Her foot crunches down on a particularly loud branch.  
  
"And?"  
  
" _And,_  get this: she literally owned the whole damn building," Nayeon says, waiting for the reveal to land. Except Sana's thoughts are already somewhere else as she spots a head of blue hair and a girl beside her, their arms linked together. Dahyun is laughing so hard at something that she has to stop walking, dragging the girl beside her - taller, a head of long brown hair and a nice smile - to one of the benches, and she collapses onto the other girl, arm slung over her shoulders.  
  
"You okay?" She hears Nayeon say from beside her, voice soft, a careful hand on her arm. They must have stopped running, because Sana's legs are starting to cramp a bit suddenly, and Dahyun is still laughing with abandon, the way she used to with Sana over dinner tables and ice cream.  
  
  
  
  
Sana has no right to be upset, really. She was enjoying her time with Nayeon too, and she's been going out for more impromptu parties and club outings just to get back into the mood of enjoying her time here, and Dahyun was there, looking so - happy. The kind of happiness Sana can really only offer in incomplete portions. And  _Nayeon_ , who was kind enough to walk her home and give her time even though - oh shit - Sana scavenges around the apartment for her phone.  
  
**To: Annoyeon / 13:04**  
hi.... ):  
  
**To: Annoyeon / 13:04**  
i'm sorry... idk what got to me. dinner later to make up for it? wanna hear more about your sugar mommy  
  
Sana watches the  _typing_  status go on and off for a good five minutes, before Nayeon finally shoots back with something that makes Sana laugh out loud.  
  
**From: Annoyeon / 13:04**  
sugar mommy with FEELINGS! hello!  
  
**From: Annoyeon / 13:04**  
and you're still paying  
  
  
➼  
  
  
For what it's worth, there's no real dramatic moment. Sana doesn't get stuck in the rain, doesn't go back to the teahouse Dahyun had brought her to in the beginning, doesn't burst into tears while buying the ddeokbokki they used to share after yoga class. If nothing else, time only seems to make clear how wilful Sana is being about all of this.  
  
In the end, all it takes is spongebob-nails to look at Sana, and then do a double-take while she's returning her pass, a sour expression on her face.  
  
"You've been taking a lot of make-up classes recently."  
  
Sana pauses. Should she feels sheepish? She's been paying for the classes like everyone else, even if she takes up an extra hammock on odd dates. She even phones in like, way ahead.  
  
"Um, yeah..." Sana says in the end. She was the last in the queue so she can't make an escape, and nails girl is still staring her down, lips twisted together.  
  
"Does this have anything to do with Kim Dahyun? You guys stopped hanging out recently."  
  
Sana's head snaps up from where she'd been eyeballing the little fortune cat stuck onto the register, and nails girl gets a look of realization on her face.  
  
"You know she's been re-scheduling all the time too, right? If you're avoiding each other, maybe staying in your original slot would be a better strategy?"  
  
Sana drags her nails over the fabric of her exercise pants. Nervous tic. Dahyun's been rescheduling too?  
  
"Friend fights are so dramatic these days," Sana hears, only vaguely, her mind running to ten different places. Nails girl dings the drawer open and deposits Sana's pass. "Just kiss and make up or something, okay?"  
  
  
➼  
  
⤦  
  
➳  
  
  
Kim Dahyun's typical morning looks like this: she gets up to the persistent sound of an alarm clock, tailored to blare a generic voice that sounds uncannily like her mom shouting  _get up_! at her, and rolls out of bed. She gives herself three minutes to lie face-flat on the carpet, and then pushes herself up to head over to the toilet. Today, unlike usual, she decides to check her phone before brushing her teeth, and the screen unfurls into light to reveal a bunch of notifications from different people, and one simple LINE message that stares back at her atop the barrage of KakaoTalk ones.   
  
In bright green,  _one new message from Minatozaki Sana-Chan_.  
  
  
  
The meeting place they've chosen is decidedly neutral. Dahyun sits in the corner of this nondescript second-floor teahouse, and feels her palms start to sweat. It's not that Dahyun doesn't worry that this meeting could bring every ugly, uncontrollable feeling back, but even the thought of seeing Sana again makes Dahyun weigh the gains much more than the losses. It's not intelligent or rational or sensible, all the things that Dahyun is, the same things Sana made her disregard.  
  
Truthfully, Dahyun has spent every day missing the way Sana makes her feel.  
  
Chaeyoung had never said anything like  _I told you so_  - not while Dahyun was sitting drunk on her coach the night after they fought, carding careful fingers through her hair. For all her bravado, Chaeyoung was gentle with Dahyun, and probably the kinder of them two. Still, Dahyun had seen the warnings long before any of her friends, but Sana had just been so - so easy to love. To fall in love with. From the moment her collected demeanour had changed to something warmer when Dahyun had fumbled along in their first business meetings to everything that she ended up being: kind, bright, full of endless laughter. Dahyun had imagined she would always be alright with just dreaming, but the way she'd snapped at Sana that night revealed an uglier kind of want in her that she hadn't quite recognized in herself until it was unceremoniously forced out of her. It was embarrassing.  
  
Sana is walking through the door right now, her hair a dark brown, darker than Dahyun remembers, looking around for Dahyun, and her eyes widen when they land on where the  younger girl is. Sana still has that shade of cherry lipstick on, everything that she is rushing back to Dahyun in waves. She forces herself to smile - politely, pleasantly. As if they hadn't spent the past few months avoiding each other. Dahyun is good at this, but Sana not quite yet. Her smile is small, cautious,  
  
"Hi," Sana says, standing awkwardly beside the chair.  
  
"Hi," Dahyun returns, and stands up.  
  
"Let's go outside to talk," Sana blurts out, as if she'd been coaching herself only to be brave enough to say that. Dahyun watches the nervousness on her face, and thinks back to how she used to be the one stumbling over her words. Distance has provided a sort of clarity that Dahyun never really had in the whirlwind that brought Sana into her life - the impulsiveness, the poor decisions. Sana is thrumming her fingers on the wooden finish of the table.  
  
"I already drank some water," Dahyun motions at the glass on her table perched upon the beige napkin.  
  
"Oh," Sana says, and doesn't sit down. "Water is free."  
  
  
  
  
Sana is silent for the most part of their walk, staring straight ahead at the cherry blossoms that have started to bloom in little pockets on the trees in the park. They've not put much of a distance between themselves, and if Dahyun just used a bit of imagination, it could be as if they never had that fight. Sana could be here with her now, strolling obliviously through the park and talking Dahyun's head off, and Dahyun would smile and fill the hole in her chest with whatever love Sana was willing to give.  
  
"Dahyunie," Sana says, finally. Her voice is soft.  
  
Dahyun watches the way their footsteps fall into rhythm - left, right, left, right.  
  
"I'm sorry," Dahyun decides, before she can stop herself. Sana looks a little stunned, and offended, almost.  
  
"For what?"  
  
"I -" The thousands of ways she's said it in her head, the months they've been away from each other. "I asked for more than what you could give me, and..."  
  
Sana stops walking. Fixes Dahyun with a look that she cannot for the life of her read. "You never asked me for anything," Sana says, and her voice is sure. Dahyun feels something coil tight inside her chest, because Sana is looking at her with those wide eyes that hold galaxies inside them, and Dahyun can never have her completely without causing her unhappiness. "Only ever given me happy things."  
  
  
➳  
  
  
It's easy to fall back into an easy friendship, and the lines that they've drawn clearly somehow makes it even easier to be around Sana than before. Sana tells Dahyun freely about the work she does, and the people she loves here and back home. Dahyun thinks that it's fine, more than fine, to have so much of Sana before she will eventually leave.  
  
Dahyun's led a very different life from Sana's - followed the path of least resistance and ended up in a well-paying job, even if she got there by a bit of nepotism. Sana tells her about her plans to be a star in Japan, the way she and her friend Momo had trained for years before deciding that they had to choose between stardom and education. The diverging paths that they took. Now Momo is a dance instructor at one of the biggest studios in Japan, leading more wayward young girls to pursue their rebellious dreams; Sana is here in a foreign country, drawing a five-figure salary and still feeling like her life hasn't quite begun.  
  
It is times like these that Dahyun feels like Sana is deliberately seeking to confuse her, because Sana's eyes are fond again, fixed on her. She looks up through the open canopy at the little cluster of stars that they can still see from here - a miracle, really, given the state of their dust-filled skies recently - and then back at Dahyun.  
  
The rain that had beaten down on the plastic roof just now has stopped, leaving a sheet of dew in the night air.  
  
"Life brings you to all sorts of places," she says. Sana hardly hesitates before she speaks now, another reminder that she's had one foot set on this soil for years now. "And I've had some wonderful surprises."  
  
Dahyun could kiss her in this moment. These little moments that seem to extend forever, Sana's hair falling off her shoulders in loose waves, her hand hovering above Dahyun's knee. But then Sana seems to break the spell, shakes her head and shrugs on her jacket. She places her clean skewer back on the table, thanking the  _ahjumoni_  with a smile, and Dahyun follows, pushes back her plastic stool, steps out into the cold with the older girl. Lets the wisps of wind skate across her cheeks as Sana puts her in a playful chokehold, pulling them gently down the street.  
  
She can be content with this. She can, she  _can_.  
  
  
➳  
  
⤦  
  
➼  
  
  
Osaka is everything she remembers.   
  
Her return was a surprise - no one even knew to receive her at the airport, and Sana hadn't meant to make her mother cry like that when she opened the door and saw her standing there. Still, there is a kind of light that touches everything she loves here, that makes Sana inconsolably weepy at the smallest things, like their little cuckoo clock on the wall going off just minutes after she's laid down on the couch. It's the comfort that home brings - the freedom to laugh at things, to cry at things. To not explain. Sana has missed it dearly.  
  
"Welcome home," her mother says, gently, and Sana feels it: the months of longing, strung into one small phrase, the gentle hand on her own, warm and heavy like an anchor.   
  
"I love you,  _kaasan_ ," Sana says, impulsively, and it feels as wonderful as it is heavy. Real. True. Her mother's eyes widen. "I do."  
  
Her mother moves closer, the  _dangos_  between them forgotten. Presses her forehead to Sana's, the hands that have held her face since she was young holding it now. "Then do not leave me again, sweet girl." And it is only a request, not a demand, it will never be a demand, but Sana hears it all the same.   
  
  
  
Sana lays in bed for a while, her friends having gone to sleep after they'd made their plans for tomorrow. Sana had received a particularly loud snap that nearly woke up her entire house. It'd been surprisingly easy convincing her company to grant her leave. She'd been making a steady profit, and notably hadn't used up much of the rest days she was entitled to because she'd wanted to stay a little longer in Korea with Dahyun, earlier in her tenure.   
  
Dahyun.   
  
_"Have you ever been to Osaka?"  
  
"I've been to New Zealand," Dahyun says. "Is that like Osaka?"  
  
Sana can't help the laugh that she lets out. "Perhaps the cycling," she says, softly, and Dahyun hits her on the arm. The tall building outside their window disappears as the bus moves forward, and Sana can see the stars above them. Dahyun has been listening to Sana talk about Osaka for what seems like hours, and Sana doesn't know if she's boring her, or if there's something else on Dahyun's mind entirely, or...  
  
"I want to go there, someday," Dahyun says, and Sana feels something in her chest tighten. Dahyun is looking down at the flowers in her lap.  
  
"Oh," Sana says.  
  
"Because we're friends," Dahyun says.  
  
"Oh," Sana says again, and thinks about the way the sky wraps around the earth, that they'd been gazing at the same moon growing up, up there in the distance.   
  
"I'll bring you." Dahyun's cheeks look even softer under the moonlight, painting them into round circles of light. It makes Sana say foolish things. "I promise."  
_  
  
  
There is so much to love about being home, and Sana swears like a sailor when she's drunk, but this time it's in a tongue she's always known, and her friends are laughing and screaming around her, and Sana is so, so happy. Until she starts, inexplicably, to cry. It's a strange feeling, really, and Sana stumbles out of their booth with a quick excuse, pushing past the warm bodies on the dance floor.  
  
Sana's only had a few minutes to catch her breath before Momo finds her in the bathroom. Momo will always find her, Sana has come to realize, even if she's tucked away in the corner bathroom store, mascara wiped messily around her eyes.  
  
"Hey," Momo says, locks the door behind her, cramming the two of them into the small stall. Sana can tell she's trying not to laugh, that little shit.  
  
"Come to gloat?"  
  
"Are you on your period or something? You really shouldn't have drunk that whole bottle of gin if-"  
  
"I'm  _not_ ," Sana says. Slurs, really.   
  
"You've never been a weepy drunk," Momo says. She puts the toilet seat down, takes her place on it, bare thighs and all.   
  
"I'm not  _being_  a weepy drunk," Sana says indignantly, and she feels like she might just pass out. If she weren't so lightheaded she could probably put a meaning to this feeling.  
  
Momo laughs. There's something nice about it, Sana thinks, that Momo isn't trying to comfort her with tenderness, that Momo's arm around her waist is enough.  
  
"I think you're incomplete," Momo says, and Sana's head snaps up.   
  
"What?"  
  
"You don't go to a foreign country for so long without leaving a little bit of your heart with some place," Momo is saying, and Sana feels like everything is crashing down all at once, but in a vague sort of way, like she's right in front of a moving train that's still so far away. "Or someone."  
  
"We're just friends," Sana manages to bite out, and wasn't really prepared for how much it stings, realizing belatedly that she didn't even have to ask who Momo was referring to. A fresh wave of tears threatens to overwhelm her, and Sana feels - ridiculous. She never thought she'd ever be one of these people - Reina's more of the type, but even  _she's_ outside dancing and not crying in a dingy toilet stall even though she and her boyfriend broke up just weeks ago. It's been half a year, almost, with Dahyun, but something about all of it still curls into Sana's gut and refuses to let go.  
  
Momo's thumb skates across Sana's cheek and comes away wet, and Sana finds herself staring at it, the wet spot. "Sana," she hears Momo say, "you don't have to be strong all the time. Not in front of me."  
  
And Sana loves this place, and loves her friends, and loves her family, and she wouldn't leave them for the world, and yet -  
  
"Momo," Sana says, leaning forward, pressing a hand to her abdomen. Her stomach turns. Momo's shoes are new - Sana had just chosen them for her this afternoon.  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Get out of the way before I hurl."  
  
  
➼  
  
  
Momo calls it  _Operation Get Yourself Together_ , which Sana can't really argue with. She chooses a nice dress for the date, a cerulean blue one, and considers a straw hat seriously before leaving it at home. Moving on should be done in style, after all.  
  
Blind dates are always a little strange, but Mina is.... nice. Sana takes to her almost immediately, the warmth of her smile that quickly emerges with a bit of prodding, the way Mina cocks her head at Sana, studying her when she thinks Sana isn't noticing. She's someone Sana could imagine herself loving.  
  
All things considered, Mina is the most pleasantly normal person she's ever met through Momo, which admittedly isn't a terribly high bar. Maybe that other girl - Kei, was it? - could compete with her. She works as a Japanese teacher here because she really liked this one Kpop band that turned out to be filled with jerks. Still, her students are her number one love now, and Mina had found many more reasons to stay. Her favourite fruit is lemon, and she has a gigantic, hulking dog named Ray.  
  
"Oh," Sana says, and finds herself reaching out to touch Mina lightly on the elbow, laughing. This is nice, Sana thinks idly, and wonders if something about this is wrong. "People say I look like a  _shiba_." The other girl jerks at the contact, and Sana watches the blush creep up her cheeks, fire-red, the way she tucks her chin into her chest in embarrassment.   
  
"A beautiful one," Mina says, and then claps both hands over her mouth, eyes going wide. Sana starts to laugh, and Mina is  _so much_  like another girl she used to know that it's... it hurts. Still.  
  
Sana can see Momo's talking head in her brain telling her to  _get it together_ , but Mina is looking at her again now, and Sana wonders how long she spent in her own head. She leans forward again, and Mina is so pretty, really. Unbelievably so.   
  
Yet Sana can't seem to feel anything.  
  
She can't do this to her.  
  
"Mina-"  
  
"Momo told me," Mina says, and Sana stops, surprised.   
  
"Told you what?"  
  
The smile Mina gives her in return isn't sad, just - almost sympathetic, and that makes Sana feel worse, actually. "Sana," Mina says, and Sana gets it, suddenly. How she's been this whole meeting. How her mind has wandered off at random, as if Mina weren't right in front of her, waiting for her to come back. "I don't mind that you're still moving on, but I'd really like if I weren't just a tool for you to do so."  
  
There's something so terrible about this, Sana thinks. Speaking in their mother tongue, everything is crueler, neater.  
  
"I'm really, really sorry," Sana offers, finally. "I do really like you," Sana says, and finds  _herself_ blushing. Korea has made her forward, but it still sounds like a little too much in Japanese.   
  
Mina cracks a bigger smile then, and it's mischievous, the first smile she's shown thus far that wasn't just polite or fond. "I'm very likeable," Mina says, and Sana spots some gum in that laugh. For the first time the whole meeting, Sana laughs along with her unreservedly, and it feels nice. Wonderful. Healing.  
  
  
➼  
  
⤦  
  
➳  
  
  
Dahyun hadn't meant to eavesdrop. She swears!  
  
Jeongyeon was just dragging them to her "favourite bakery" after their English class, and it serves "the best bagels", which are "not just glorified donuts", Jeongyeon had droned, while Dahyun followed her quietly, cursing at the rain that had started up without warning.  
  
"Here!" The older girl had exclaimed, and Dahyun followed glumly before she saw it: Sana and another girl, sitting and giggling, Sana's hand brushing across the girl's arm. The other girl was so - Dahyun doesn't think she's seen someone as pretty in her life.  
  
"I wanna go," Dahyun tells Jeongyeon, as they make a beeline for the cashier. She sounds like a child, a petulant one who's getting angry at Sana's own happiness when she was the one who asked her to run after it, and-  
  
"I want you to try the bagel," Jeongyeon says, not looking at her. "Besides, it's raining out."  
  
"Yoo Jeongyeon," Dahyun snaps, and Jeongyeon shoots her a dangerously dirty look. "Ssi. Can we at least sit by the side?"  
  
Jeongyeon is still looking up at the menu, and Dahyun feels the increasing urge to strangle her to death. "Ooh, new nutmeg flavour launched today," she says, and Dahyun will kill her. She really will.  
  
  
  
Turns out Most Beautiful Girl On Earth is  _Japanese_ , from what little Dahyun can parse from their conversation. Sana is so happily conversing that she hasn't even noticed Dahyun staring at her, which Dahyun should be glad for, but she just feels deflated.  
  
"You ok?" Jeongyeon asks, suddenly, teeth sunk halfway into her bagel.  
  
"The bagel is just a glorified donut."  
  
"Oh," Jeongyeon says, suddenly, sitting up straight, realization dawning on her face.   
  
'What?"  
  
"That's Sana," she says, and Dahyun whips back to face her. "You know, she looks better in real life. You're a pretty shit photographer."  
  
"Be quiet."  
  
"You didn't tell me your  _ex_  was here," Jeongyeon says,  _still_  eating the bagel, but there's an apologetic edge to her voice now, and Dahyun can't find it in her heart to stay annoyed.  
  
"She's not my ex. And I was  _trying_  to tell you, but there was the _nutmeg_ , and the soy coffee, and you flirting with the server dude -"  
  
"You wanna go?" Jeongyeon asks, already scooping up the bagel in a napkin.  
  
"No," Dahyun says, before she even registers it. Sana laughs again, even more loudly this time, eyes twinkling, and some part of Dahyun  _really, desperately_  tries to be happy, to take it all in and smile. This is her life from now on, and Dahyun wants to be in it. "We can stay."  
  
  
➳  
  
  
So: Dahyun does something a little stupid. She's not sure whether it's the soju she got with Jeongyeon on the way home, or just the simple exhaustion of trying to hold herself together, or the fact that the older girl has passed out on her couch and is in no position to stop her from doing what she's about to do with her clumsy fingers, but she picks up her phone and scrolls to Sana's contact on Kakaotalk. Sana's latest unread message about this arts festival they can attend together with their friends stares back at Dahyun, right beside a small cropped picture of her lying in a bed of lavender flowers. Everything feels a little hazy.  
  
**To: Sana-Chan / 00:25**  
sannannnnaaaaa?  
  
The reply is nearly instantaneous.  
  
**From: Sana-Chan / 00:25**  
hey dahyunie  
  
**From: Sana-Chan / 00:25**  
you okay?  
  
**To: Sana-Chan / 00:25**  
sanaaaaaaaaaa?  
  
**From: Sana-Chan / 00:26**  
are you alright? do you need me to come get you?  
  
Through the bleariness Dahyun can imagine Sana's wide eyes, the downward quirk of her lips. The way she looks at Dahyun,  _really_  looks, like Dahyun's precious and wonderful. In a way Dahyun doesn't deserve. Her phone dings again, because Sana is who she is, and  _of course_ she would worry. Dahyun's fingers move of their own accord. She is a pianist by blood, after all.  
  
**From: Sana-Chan / 00:26**  
dahyunie, are you safe?  
  
**To: Sana-Chan / 00:27**  
am hommr  
  
**To: Sana-Chan / 00:27**  
jsut mis you  
  
**To: Sana-Chan / 00:27**  
rely relay mis you  
  
Dahyun has her thumb on thekey, dragging out a long string of Os into the text box, before she passes out on the kitchen table.  
  
  
➳  
  
  
Arriving at the foot of Sana's apartment block feels - strange, but also like it's been a long time coming. Of course, Sana had sounded a little confused over the phone - about the messages too, surely, and for a moment Dahyun wonders what she's doing here, hands in her pockets, the autumn breeze whipping at her hair.  
  
Sana's sweet voice floats out from the intercomm when Dahyun keys in her house number.   
  
_Turn right when you exit the lift, Dahyunie! Mine is the door with flowers on it_.  
  
When Sana opens the door, Dahyun has to hold back the urge to take a sharp breath. Sana's not wearing any makeup, a towel slung over her shoulder. She's only wearing a loose white t-shirt and sleep pants, and Dahyun feels like the newness of this isn't really why she can't breathe. Sana's smile is so wide, even if a little concerned. So much has evened out between them over the months, and Sana brings a different kind of comfort now - not the nervous fluttering Dahyun used to feel, but a gentle calm. An anchor.  
  
"Welcome to my humble abode," Sana says with a small laugh, fingers wrapped around the wooden door frame while the other hand sweeps across the expanse of her living room.   
  
At first glance, Sana's apartment is spacious and decidedly minimalistic - Dahyun doesn't know if it's out of choice or convenience, but there's few furniture in Sana's living room. Like it'll be easy to pack up and leave.  
  
"Do you want anything to drink? Actually-" Sana starts making a beeline for the kitchen. "Lemon tea, right?"  
  
While waiting, Dahyun looks around the apartment again, and something about it feels not quite lived-in, like Sana's always ready to up and go. There's only a couple of photo frames, of Sana's family, and her best friend that Sana's shown her sometimes, in badly filmed videos of them at karaoke bars and amusement parks. Sana's hung some light pink dried flowers along the walls adorned with fairy lights, and Dahyun wonders if her house at home looks like this too. Dahyun wilts a bit at the knowledge that those parts of Sana's life will never come easy to her, a life so similar to hers but still separated by language, cultural quirks. Years lived without Dahyun. Years in the future too -  
  
She's brought back to the present when Sana sets down the glass of water in front of her, and Dahyun feels herself blushing for no real reason. She's usually so good at staying in the moment, moulding herself to the people around her, but Sana just throws her off-kilter.  
  
"Dahyun," Sana starts, then stops, her fingers twitching by her side. Dahyun thinks about the times before all this, when Sana would have reached out carelessly to tuck Dahyun's hair behind her ear. "Is everything okay? Why did you want to stop by?"  
  
Dahyun doesn't know whether to dither or be straight to the point. Given last night's text messages, she figures she should just be upfront.  
  
"I saw you - at the cafe yesterday."  
  
Sana's eyes widen. "Oh," she says, and Dahyun doesn't think she's imagining the trembling in her voice. "Were you passing by or -"  
  
"With Jeongyeon - we just - we were just out of view, I guess. I've always liked corner seats." Dahyun lies. "You looked happy."  
  
Sana looks like she's choosing her words very carefully. "She was very nice," Sana says, finally, "but we weren't really compatible."  
  
"Oh," Dahyun says. Flushes. Thinks of the way Sana leaned close to the other girl, her hand brushing down her arm. "I thought - I went home and got drunk," Dahyun says, plainly. "After."  
  
Sana's eyes flicker across Dahyun's face, like she's searching for something. "And then you - sent me those messages."  
  
Dahyun thinks Sana would have never brought them up first, if only it'd help Dahyun to feel less uncomfortable. Sana has always been giving and giving and giving, and Dahyun's expected so much from her without offering anything in return. "Yeah," she says, finally.  
  
Sana takes a deep breath. Dahyun watches the rise of her chest, the way her eyelashes flutter. She really is so beautiful, Dahyun thinks. Has always known from the first time she saw her, even before she'd learned that Sana was sweet and wonderful and kind, everything that broke down Dahyun's defences. In this moment, Sana's confusion has a kind of raw truth to it that Dahyun's never seen before: the longing for something greater than themselves, the year they've spent dancing around this that feels like decades. Sana slides her hand into Dahyun's open palm and squeezes, one gentle motion that threatens to tear Dahyun apart.  
  
"Dahyunie... we agreed that we would stop at being friends, right? Did I understand that wrongly or-"  
  
Like a breaking wave, Dahyun surges forward first, palm finding its way to Sana's cheek, fingers pressed behind Sana's ear, a loud roaring noise coursing through her own.  
  
Sana's lips are soft, opening in surprise before she's sliding her arms behind Dahyun's back and drawing her even closer, pressed chest to chest, and Dahyun's knees buckle when Sana lets out a whine, soft and low, and she nudges them towards the other end of the couch, toes scuffing at Sana's carpet.  
  
Then Sana's warm hands are on her, pushing her backward, arm leveled against Dahyun's stomach, and Dahyun feels the back of her head hit the armrest as Sana crowds over her, legs thrown around Dahyun's hips. There's a kind of hunger in Sana's eyes that's almost terrifying, and it sends a shudder down Dahyun's spine as her hands slip under the hem of Sana's shirt, fingers making contact with the skin of Sana's stomach. Sana lets out another whimper at this, and Dahyun watches the warm blush that blooms across Sana's cheeks, the way her eyes are unfocused, how she's shifting even closer to press against Dahyun's thigh. It's all too much, everything that Sana is in the moment. All for her.  
  
She leans up to meet Sana again when Sana's phone dings on the coffee table beside them, and something in Sana seems to snap back to reality.   
  
"We shouldn't be doing this." She pulls back, moving away from where Dahyun is to the other side of the couch. Buttons up her jeans, and Dahyun can see her fingers trembling. Dahyun feels like her whole body is trembling, as if Sana's absence has left her colder.  
  
"What's wrong?" Dahyun's hair is undone, and the wetness of Sana's mouth still lingers on the corners of her lips. She tries to tangle her hands in Sana's shirt again to pull her back, but Sana fixes her with a look that's unequivocal, and Dahyun stops.  
  
"I don't want you to regret anything," Sana says, softly. "Dahyunie, listen to me -"  
  
"I won't regret you." She's still breathless, and the truth that comes out is clearer than Dahyun had intended, laid bare in the space between them. Dahyun hears Sana's breath hitch, watches as she leans forward, gaze flickering to Dahyun's lips. Dahyun just wants to kiss her again. Sana always makes her this way, reckless and lost. "I've never regretted you."  
  
"Listen to me," Sana says, louder this time, and something about this feels so familiar. The tone of Sana's voice. The way she's looking at Dahyun like she's afraid, her hand gentle on Dahyun's cheek, like the younger girl's so easily broken. Maybe Dahyun is. Maybe she's always been the coward for running away. For coming back too late. If she could just go back, she'd ask Sana to stay, and they could take their time to fall in love, and they could work something out. They could be honest. They could have stopped hiding.  
  
"The company wants me back in Japan, after the year's done."  
  
Dahyun freezes. Her hand that was playing nervously with Sana's shirt stops.  
  
"Oh," she manages to get out, wondering if she's ever felt this empty.  
  
Sana holds Dahyun's gaze, and it's like she hears it before Sana even says anything at all.  
  
"I told them I'd go."


	3. Chapter 3

Dahyun helps her pack. There’s a couple of friends from work, too, and no one but Nayeon seems to know her, which is both comfortable and a little disappointing. For as big as she feels, Sana can be folded into five large brown boxes, minus the gaudy chandelier that she’s trying to barter for a little money online.

At night, they sit on the edge of Sana’s terrace, watching the sun set. Sana’s made hot chocolate that’s a little sickly sweet, but Dahyun isn’t wont to complain about it. When the sun dips below the horizon, Dahyun steers them away from the small talk they’ve been making about Sana’s plans for the next few months. For the next few years. For her family, and the dance classes that she’ll be taken, and the rescue classes that she’ll be taking to keep her Korean literacy intact. For Dahyun’s future - the corporate ladder she’ll be climbing, the office with a view she’ll be moving into. The people she’ll be meeting on dating apps, those based in Seoul, half an hours’ walk away from her apartment. Sana smiles through all of this, a saccharine one that sets something churning in Dahyun’s stomach.

“Am I in it?”

“What?”

“Your future,” Dahyun says, finally. She hardly broaches these topics, now, careful to dance around the edges even more than she had before. And she’d already been so careful prior, Sana thinks. She sighs as the darkness blankets them, the lights on the roof blinking on around them.

“I want you to be.”

The world stretches out before them. Sana can see the stars, from this rooftop, could name a constellation if she tried hard enough. Hears the pitter-patter of her own heartbeat inside her chest. Sees Dahyun’s breath fogging slowly in the air - measured, long ones. Dahyun raises a hand to her chest, places a palm above the left side of her sternum, like she’s trying to steady herself. Sana watches it - the longest breath Dahyun has let out yet, extending into the air like a flume.

“Oh.”

“Is that - could that be enough? I wish it could be enough,” Sana says, and she’s stuttering, and Dahyun is reaching for her fingers. Both of their hands are cold in the night air, and Dahyun brings the back of Sana’s hand to her lips. The motion is soft and slow, barely there, but Sana feels it like a livewire in her chest. 

There’s a kind of carelessness to all of this, Sana thinks. When you never know how long you can have something, everything is tinged with a reckless abandon. Sana understands. Sana knows. Sana aches. 

It's this that makes her say: "I've thought about it, you know. Pretending like we didn't have an expiry date." 

Dahyun turns to look at her. There's starlight in her eyes.

"But you would become a memory," Sana continues. Her throat feels tight. "You would hate me. Or I would hate myself, maybe," Sana says, feels Dahyun's fingers tighten around the flesh of her hand.

“I could never hate you,” Dahyun says, despite herself, and Sana smiles.

Dahyun wishes Sana weren't so eloquent, or kind, or prescient, that she would be more selfish, somehow. That she would hurt her, as she wants to. Leave her, as she needs to. Instead, Sana has moved to place her left hand on Dahyun's, gazing softly at her. 

"This way," Sana says, breathless, "this way, I can still have you. Even if you're far away."

 

∞

 

“Don’t you think you’re being… How should I say this?” 

Chaeyoung only learned to drive in Spring last year, got her driver’s license after a string of failures that Dahyun pretended she never saw. She’s jamming the brakes now in front of the traffic light that just turned red, and Dahyun jerks forward against her seatbelt.

“Thoughtful?” Dahyun proffers. 

“I was thinking more like really fucking stupid?” Chaeyoung’s fingers drum against the leather of the steering wheel, and Dahyun follows the motion. They’re tapping to the rhythm of the song on the radio. Dahyun had heard it once, while she and Sana had hidden away in a beer and chicken shop in an alleyway, when the snow had come flurrying down without warning and Sana’s shoes started soaking through with water.

(“I can’t believe you remember this,” Sana said, a little awestruck, as Dahyun lit up at the same song playing on the radio.

They were at a waffle place, this time, and Sana had eaten most of it, let Dahyun put whipped cream on her nose and take a photo.

Dahyun had blinked. “I don’t listen to much music,” Dahyun said, and Sana’s lips twisted in a small smile. A mischievous one.

“And here I was, thinking I was special,” Sana said, stand folded across her chest, and Dahyun had flushed all the way to the tips of her ears.)

“Stop thinking about her.” Chaeyoung’s knowing voice cuts through the memory, and Dahyun straightens in the passenger seat.

“We’re still friends, you know,” Dahyun says, and Chaeyoung’s eyes soften as she looks over. “Like me and you.”

“You know that’s not how it -”

“Green,” Dahyun says, nods out towards to the light that’s just changed colour.

Chaeyoung puts her pedal to the floor.

“I’m just saying that,” Chaeyoung sucks in a breath. The flowers on the side of the road have started to bloom again. “I care about you, and -”

“You don’t want me to get hurt,” Dahyun says. It’s a little funny, all of this. Dahyun has never really been a masochist of any kind, but here she is, hurtling towards something that will certainly be painful in one way or another.

“First the packing, and now this - you’re letting her kick you around after -”

“No one is kicking anyone around,” Dahyun bites, and startles a little at her own voice. 

“Right,” Chaeyoung says, features hardening. Her fingers tighten around the steering wheel. Dahyun reaches out without thinking, loops fingers around her wrist.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and Chaeyoung nods. Her lashes flutter against the sunlight. 

The sign that says Terminal Three comes into view, and the car flags near the checkpoint for bigger vehicles.

They’re driving into the terminal now, and Chaeyoung’s craning her neck to locate the entrance to the carpark. 

“I’m sorry too,” Chaeyoung says, finally, voice soft, and means it. 

 

∞

 

Nayeon's texts arrive in a flurry of misinformation - Dahyun and Chaeyoung have been running from one belt to another, and by the time they've arrived at the correct one, a big 3 hanging over their heads, Sana has already been rid of her luggage, carrying a small brown duffel bag over her shoulder.

It mustn't be as cold in Japan, Dahyun figures, with the thin coat that Sana has hung over her arm. Nayeon is already waving at them, and Dahyun's feet carry her closer and closer until she feels Chaeyoung's fingers curl around her wrist, Sana's eyes landing on her approaching form at the exact same moment.

"I'm not going with you," Chaeyoung says, but Dahyun can hardly hear it through the thrumming in her ears at the way Sana is looking at her, broken and put together all at once. They were over this, she thought. They would just say hello, and I'll text you, and I'll wish you well. 

"Don't leave me alone," Dahyun says. Wonders at the way her voice is barely there, brittle around the edges.

Chaeyoung's eyes are soft under the bright lights of Incheon airport. She shakes her head. Lets go of her hand. 

"Dahyun," Sana says, closer than Dahyun expects, and she watches Chaeyoung stalk away to the escalator. Dahyun turns around, and breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

Sana's wearing a simple black sweater today, a Japanese brand name that Dahyun can't read stitched into the front. Dahyun's eyes prickle at the way the older girl is looking at her. Softly, gently. Nothing like the first time they'd met. Everything like the first time she'd broken her heart.

"Hi," Dahyun says, instead, finding her voice. "All ready?"

"I didn't know you'd be coming," Sana says, softly, and Dahyun guesses as much: she had been quiet on their chats the past few days. Hadn't asked anything about her flight.

"I-" Dahyun says. Looks at Nayeon behind Sana, waving at her with a small smile. Shrugs. "I was invited, you could say."

"Oh," Sana says, laughing a little. Looks back at Nayeon. Her eyes are wet. "Well," she says, and Dahyun wonders if the hands that Sana's placed on either sides of her waist are intentional. If Sana can help it, or if Sana is the same way Dahyun is: torn apart by her instincts when they're together. "Thank you for coming, Dahyunie," Sana says, and for a moment Dahyun could imagine them standing in the middle of an empty airport with nothing to hide and nothing to lose. Can imagine herself leaning in, the blush of Sana's cheeks and the flutter of her eyelashes. Her hands on the square of Dahyun's back, bringing her closer. 

Dahyun blinks, and Incheon airport unfurls again before her eyes into throngs of people, the lights above their heads blinding. Sana staring at her with all the weight in the world.

"Please don't forget about me," Dahyun blurts, and Sana's face crumples for only the briefest of moments before pulling back together. Her band of friends are still staring curiously from behind her, keeping their distance, and Dahyun nudges Sana's waist to turn her around. To return to where she's safe and comfortable. 

Instead, Sana's fingers card through Dahyun's hair, soft and slow, palm settling on Dahyun's cheek, and Dahyun can't help but close her eyes into the touch.

"I wouldn't know how to," Sana says, carefully, and says nothing when Dahyun starts to cry, only bringing her closer.

  
  


The walk back to the car is long and quiet. Chaeyoung gets the floor number wrong twice before they finally find the right one, and she keeps glancing at Dahyun in the elevator until Dahyun lifts her head to stare back.

"You know, usually you'd be making fun of me for being a cry baby," Dahyun tries, and Chaeyoung's brows raise a little at that. Her face twists into a half-laugh, but it's heavy all the same. She reaches out to drape an arm across Dahyun's shoulders, pulling her in so their cheeks knock against each other.

"Remember that asshole sunbae in Uni? Kim Su-ji?"

"She wasn't an asshole," Dahyun says instinctively, and Chaeyoung sighs.

Dahyun can't turn her head to look at the other girl, neck locked in by her arm, but she feels the rumble of Chaeyoung's laugh, deep and low in her chest.

"Fine. Remember angel Kim Su-ji from Uni?"

"Sorry, but are we trying to tear open all of my emotional wounds today or -"

"I'm trying to apologize," Chaeyoung says. The lift doors ding open, and Chaeyoung steps outside with Dahyun still under her arm.

“What?”

“Sometimes for our anniversaries, I make Tzuyu a shitty VCR of the things we’ve done together in the year.”

Dahyun follows, confusion smoothing over whatever ache in her heart she’s trying to nurse. “I know this -”

“I also take a video of her reaction to it, and I watch it often when I’m down.”

“Is this you trying to distract me?”

Chaeyoung stops them in front of an orange pillar. Steers them to the left.

“When Sana stopped just now, outside the gates. When she looked back at you. I saw Tzuyu in her face. Kim Su-ji had never looked at you like that the two years you were together,” Chaeyoung says. They’ve found her car. Dahyun thinks she’s starting to cry again. “So. I’m sorry for doubting that what she felt for you was real.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Dahyun says, even if it feels like something is cracking open in her chest. “Half the time I was thinking -”

“Don’t ruin my apology,” Chaeyoung says, pulling the passenger side door open and staring Dahyun down. “Now, let’s go get some ice cream.”

 

∞

 

Sana’s message comes hours after her flight lands. Nayeon had sent something about _thank you for coming, she’s safely there now_ and Dahyun had just sent a smiling emoji back. Turned off her phone and flopped back onto bed. She almost wished it were a work day so she would have something to occupy herself with.

Now a picture of the moon in Osaka stares back at her through the screen, taken from an odd angle. Sana has never been great at photography, but Dahyun feels something peel apart under her ribs. It’s an odd feeling, that Sana has the power to take her apart from so many miles away, still.

Dahyun takes the lift down to the first floor and walks out into the cold. Looks up at the moon. There’s few people on the streets now, most of the store owners already pulling down the metal blinders.

Dahyun aims her camera at the sky. It’s a new phone, so the light catches well enough, but Dahyun’s hand shakes when she hits the shutter. It kind of looks like an echo of the moon, Dahyun thinks. Two of them hanging in the sky.

She presses _send._  

Five minutes later, her phone dings again, and the screen brings up a picture of Sana’s soft smile against the evening light. There’s people behind her - probably her parents, and Sana’s hand is held out in front of her, catching the light streaming through.

_Today is day one of not forgetting about you, Dahyun-ssi. Sleep well._

 

∞

 

Two months in, Sana has stopped sending daily reminders - no more pictures of oceans, or flowers. Only the occasional _hey, how are you doing?_ accompanied by a string of things that have happened recently, like the family cat developing a rash and Sana planting some string bean plants in the backyard. Work is piling up, and Sana may not have the time to talk to her so much but she’ll be thinking of her. She went for a company dinner the previous day, and there was a girl that was really nice, and Sana wonders if they could be friends.

They’re moving forward, as they said they would, but Dahyun sits in the back of the cab and closes her eyes, presses her cheek to the cool glass. Spring is coming, she thinks, and Sana won’t be here.

Dahyun doesn’t answer the message, just reads it over and over again for something to latch onto. Wonders how long they can do this - how long she can wrap up a little bit of her heart and send it across the ocean in a box reading Fragile. How long she can hope that it’ll arrive safely at its destination.

 

∞

 

Then: it happens in a flurry, as it always seems to. Jeongyeon is on her account that she strong-armed her into making, swiping away for the fun of it, and there’s a girl that is _really really pretty,_ Jeongyeon says, from her couch. Dahyun is at the keyboard, trying to figure out the score to a new song she heard in a drama when Jeongyeon sticks the phone in her face, and Dahyun rolls her eyes once before she focuses again on the picture on screen, throat going dry.

“What?” Jeongyeon says, when Dahyun doesn’t bat her hand away like she usually does. Cocks her head to take another look. “She doesn’t look anything like San-”

 _Hey,_ the first message pops up on screen. 

_It’s been a while._

_Sorry, I know my profile literally says I’m looking for sex but I just_

_I’m not_

_With you_

_This is so embarrassing_

_And I can see your read receipts_

_But don’t feel obligated to answer or anything, I just_

_Oh, I’m really embarrassing myself here_

Dahyun takes the phone from Jeongyeon’s hands.

_No, I’m sorry_

_I would love to meet_

Her fingers hover over the keyboard.

_And hi again_

  
  


Gahyeon arrives outside her apartment at 7pm. Jeongyeon had said something about not giving your address to people over the Internet, but Dahyun was tired of caution, and tired of waiting on someone who won’t come back, and she didn’t need it anyway, not with -

“Hi,” Gahyeon says, when Dahyun opens the door. Her smile is still gummy and bright, pulled up at the edges in all the ways Dahyun remembers. Even if they’ve gotten so much older since then, from when they were wide-eyed and fumbling in the dark.

“Hi,” Dahyun says.

“I’m gonna just -” Gahyeon says, and gasps when Dahyun locks the door behind her and kisses her, hands finding the dips of Gahyeon’s hips.

Their bodies still remember, somehow, Dahyun guiding Gahyeon past the living room and towards the bedroom door, fingers grappling with the buttons on Gahyeon’s pants, and Dahyun presses her against the bedroom door when they’ve finally made it in, sucks a cruel mark into Gahyeon’s neck that makes her jolt, eyes wide as Dahyun looks up to meet her.

“Dahyunie, slow down,” Gahyeon is saying, hands on Dahyun’s shoulders as she sinks to the floor, and Dahyun can see the memory flashing behind her eyelids, a different, sweeter voice. Gentle hands hesitating over the hem of her shirt. Eyelashes fluttering against her shoulder. Gahyeon’s pants are halfway down her thighs when Dahyun sits back down on the bed and starts to cry.

“Fuck,” she says, presses her face into her hands. “I’m sorry, I just -”

Gahyeon is next to her in an instant, the curl of her hand around Dahyun’s cheek, her other hand tipping her chin up. Dahyun notices that she’s put her pants back on, and can’t help the laugh that she lets out. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Gahyeon is patient, and gentle, and sweet, and all the things that Dahyun remembers about her, still here, now. But she isn’t Sana. 

She shakes her head softly, once, and lets Gahyeon wrap her arms around her, warm and slow. 

 

∞

 

Sana calls her on a Wednesday night. It’s three a.m. in the morning, so it must be too in Japan. Dahyun wakes up, bleary and confused, and picks up on the third ring.

“Merry Christmas!” 

It’s January.

“Unnie -”

“I just went to the _happiest place_ in the world! Disneyland!” The cheer that’s in Sana’s voice is so obviously artificial that it makes Dahyun a little sick, but she reaches out to turn on the bedside lamp all the same, checking the time on the fluorescent clock once again. 

Dahyun pushes herself upright against the headboard. There’s drool caked on the corner of her mouth. She wants to laugh, a little, at all of this. Sana only swears when she’s drunk, and her Korean has gotten worse already, the ends of the words fading off into Japanese syllables. Still, Dahyun can’t help but indulge her.

“And how was it, unnie?”

“Fun,” Sana says. There’s a wet laugh in her voice. Silence, for a long while before Sana speaks again. “You weren’t there. On the other side of an ocean, and all that.”

Dahyun listens to the sound of Sana’s breathing on the other side of the line, heavy and erratic.

“I’m so tired of this,” Dahyun says, finally. Honestly. Maybe the most honest she’s even been with Sana.

Sana’s voice is wet when she speaks again, still slurred and unclear, like she’s speaking through a tin can. “I know, Dahyunie. I’m sorry.”

 

∞

 

Sana doesn’t message for five days, and then Dahyun stops counting, until she sits up one night, hair mangled, grabs her phone, and starts typing.

No pressure. No read receipts. Only a message sent into an abyss of unread emails.

 

 **Subject** : Dog

I was thinking of adopting a _shiba._ You always said you looked like one. From what I’ve found out, I’ll need to take care of them really well, and scrub their fur so they don’t lose their shine. 

I met an old friend last week. Someone I was so in love with once, but even then I kept thinking of you. 

I’m not sure what to do other than be honest, so I am. 

  
  


Sana’s reply comes in the morning, in between Dahyun heating triangle rice up in the convenience store microwave and the long walk to the train station.

  
  


**Subject: RE:** Dog

Thank you for adopting instead of shopping ^_^ You know, I was looking out the window today, and the peach blossom trees are starting to come into bloom. The last time I saw them was with you, the two of us in the park.

Thank you for being honest. I love you too, but it seems like that hasn’t been enough.

We’re going to the beach tomorrow. My family, and my grandma - she can’t really walk that well, but she’s an amazing swimmer.

Can you swim?

  
  


**Subject** : Swimming

I started learning when I was five years old, at a pool at first, and then my dad brought me to the beach. 

I was terrified, so he lied to me that the waves would always bring me back to shore, and I jumped in.

The waves didn't bring me back, but I could swim after that. He was right behind me anyway.

Jeongyeon and I are going to a dog shelter later. What should we name him?

  
  


**Subject: RE:** Swimming

That's nice ^_____^ I've only gone to Okinawa once to swim, and we were all scaredy cats, so I just floated around on a giant yellow float.

Maybe I should try again without it this time.

P.s. I think you should name him...Geronimo!

  
  


**Subject: RE:** Swimming

I think I'll try that too.

 

∞

 

Dahyun doesn't name the dog Geronimo for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because Jeongyeon snatched the adoption papers from her hands and submitted the form before Dahyun could get anything in edgewise.

 

 **Subject:** Janggun

[SHIBAAAAAA.JPG]

He followed us home quietly, didn't even bark when he entered the living room. He likes licking Jeongyeon's face more than mine, which I'm not too sure if I'm happy about.

Maybe I'll name the next dog Geronimo.

Are you happy where you are? Or are you at least trying to be?

 

∞

 

Harajuku is the same. Makes Sana’s head spin, but in a good way, the flashing lights pulsing around her and the sounds filling her ears.

Momo had insisted on coming along with her at first, but Sana had only smiled, softly, and Momo relented, shuffling off to conduct her dance lessons. Sana was fine. Sana was okay. Settling back into her job was easy, even if Sana blurted out Korean connectors sometimes, but everyone seemed to smooth over it gently, patient with Sana like she was a child learning how to run again.

Still, something about the turn of the seasons made Sana wanted to go out. Breathe the city air. Get her mind off things, like the unread email in her phone, heavy in her pocket. The neon signs above her head are doing a good job of it.

Sana slips into a record store that’s tucked away between two arcades, the narrow door leading into a place with a high ceiling and shelves that go on forever. There’s a song playing in the background that Sana doesn’t recognize - it sounds recent enough, must have been released while she was away and distracted. She squints at the giant CD player that’ll tell her the name of the song, hands in her pockets, before someone stumbles into her from the side, CD clattering onto the floor.

She bends down instinctively to pick it up, already preparing her apologies, but they die at the tip of her tongue when she follows the line of the hand outstretched in front of her, a familiar face staring back from above.

“Sana-san,” Mina says, mirth in her voice. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Her eyes are pulled wide, and Sana wonders how she’s gotten even prettier since she last saw her. Her hair is pulled into a simple ponytail, and Sana looks down at the CD that she’s dropped. 

Keyakizaka.

“You’re a fan too?” Sana laughs, getting up, and watches the way Mina blushes, the pretty red curling behind her ears.

“I do.” Mina says, glancing around, her voice soft, “You know that I um, like -” Girls, Sana thinks, and wants to laugh. 

“Yeah,” Sana says. Places a gentle hand on Mina’s wrist. “Right,” she says. Saving Mina the anxiety. “Sorry. Yes, me too.” Holds up the CD. “Let me just get this for you.”

  
  


They find a concept cafe further away from the heart of Harajuku. It’s not easy, still, with the noise around them, but Sana slides into the booth beside Mina and warms her hands around the hot tea she’s ordered.

Mina hasn’t met Momo in a while, Sana learns, between the rush of her moving back and their hometowns being a long train ride away. 

“When did you move back?” Sana asks, while Mina says something like _It’sverycold,_ and Sana can’t help but laugh.

“You go first,” Sana says, and Mina blushes again.

“Five months ago. I found a teaching job back here, and it felt like time to come back, so I…”

Sana nods, considering.

“What about you?”

The tea is making hot swirls up into the air. 

“I am but a blade of grass that follows where the wind blows,” Sana says, closing her eyes and waving a hand out into the air in front of her like a philosopher. Mina laughs, and Sana watches the crinkle of the corners of her eyes. “I got transferred back,” she says, and Mina doesn’t miss the bittersweet note in her voice.

Mina sips at her own hot chocolate thoughtfully, turning her eyes onto Sana, who’s taken to sipping at her too-hot tea and trying to hide the tears that have gathered in her eyes at the scald.

“Do you still love that person?” Mina asks, carefully, and Sana’s tea cup lands with a clatter on the plate. 

Then Sana nods, finally, soft and slow and imperceptible. 

Mina laughs, more to herself than anything, and Sana’s expression is a little wounded when she turns to look at her.

“But -” Sana says, and her hand is on Mina’s, steady and sure. “I’m ready to move forward, I think.”

Mina peers thoughtfully at her for a moment, palms pressed to the finish of the table.

“You know, Sana-san, when I saw your face just now, I thought to myself that it was too perfect of a storm. Me and you, here. You looking like a dream.” 

Sana flushes at this, hand curling into a small fist over Mina’s.

“I cannot promise anything,” Sana offers, weakly, and Mina laughs. “But I want to - try, if - only if you’re willing. And I promise that I -” 

Mina lets out a light breath, places a hand on Sana’s thigh. Stares at the light pink ceiling above them, decorated with all sorts of beautiful things.

“Welcome home,” Mina says, finally. Pushes the tea towards Sana and presses a kiss to her cheek that makes Sana shudder. 

 

∞

 

 **Subject** : Spring

~~They’re bringing me on a~~

~~I’m going on a double date with~~

[Chaeyoung’s_Stupid_Car.jpg]

The weather finally rose above 5 degrees today, and I’ve stopped having to scrape ice off Chaeng’s windscreen. 

I think Spring will be coming really soon.

I’m trying to sit with it. Missing you. I think I’m doing well. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore, when I think of you, and where you’re going, and what you’re doing. Sometimes I smile thinking about it.

 

∞

 

Sana reads the E-mail on the train back from work. There’s a ticking noise that’s coming from one of the other cabins, and Sana’s head knocks against the glass as she tries to get into a more comfortable position. No one around her seems to notice.

There’s a bit of Dahyun’s face reflected in the windscreen, distorted as Chaeyoung is a little further away, laughing beside her, the kind where she’s pressing her hand to her stomach, bowled over and using Dahyun as support.

Sana closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out again. Looks up at the railway map: ten stops to her destination.

 

 **Subject: RE:** Spring

Sorry for not replying to your last email - it’s been a strange week, overall. It hasn’t snowed here at all, but it’s still deathly cold. I’d have preferred snow just to complete the experience.

I love Janggun! He already looks so much like me ^____^. 

Dahyunie, today I experienced serendipity (Level 8 Korean word, by the way. I still remember).

This might be presumptuous of me, but remember that girl you saw me with in the cafe? If you do, her name is Mina, and we bumped into each other again yesterday. She came back to me in the wave, I think.

I'm meeting her for a date next week. I’m telling you this because I’ve decided to be honest, too. I’m going to try and have a good time, and think as little about you as possible.

Anyway, on the way home today, the moon was already up in the sky. I think it's a full moon. I wonder if it looks that way where you are too, if you can see it above the snow.

I'm happy, Dahyunie. I'm learning to be braver.

 

∞

 

Mina chooses a place that’s near the seaside, an hour’s bus ride away from Sana’s house. It’s not too bad, Sana thinks, staring out the window at the lights that blink on as evening dawns.

The younger girl is already waiting for her at the restaurant when she arrives, clad in a dark red evening dress, and Sana stumbles forward in her own plain blouse and jeans, slipping into the seat opposite Mina’s.

“I feel underdressed,” Sana says, blushing, and Mina giggles into her glass of water. 

“I think you very much are, actually,” and this earns Mina a gentle kick under the table, Sana’s bare feet brushing up against her shins.

She hands Sana a menu.

“You didn’t look up the restaurant when I suggested it?”

“I trusted you,” Sana says, laughing, and flips open the menu to prices that are surprisingly reasonable. Mina seems to read as much on her face, laughing.

“I never expected naivete from you,” Mina teases, but it’s not unkind. Only gentle. 

  
  


The dinner is nice. They trade more stories about Korea, and then about home, about the way Sana still jumps on her father’s old back and expects him to keep up, how Mina’s been eclipsed by Ray now, so big that he covers her whole sometimes while she’s lying on the couch.

“Mina-san,” Sana says, distractedly, and Mina leans back in mid-laugh, into where Sana’s hand is waiting. The older girl brushes a little whipped cream off the edge of Mina’s lips, slowly and carefully, and there is nothing, only the quiet sound of the jazz band in the background, Mina’s hand on Sana’s relaxed wrist. The earth, continuing to turn in regular motion.

Mina giggles, then, breaking the tension, and Sana leans back onto the velvet backing of her own chair.

“Were you expecting something more?” She asks, and Mina is so pretty, Sana thinks. The curve of her lips, and the set of her eyes. Seeing through everything that Sana had thought she’d hidden away.

  
  


Mina’s apartment overlooks the sea. 

It’s a nice, spacious one, Sana can tell even from the outside, gold trimmings to the balconies shining under the dim light. 

Mina has one hand in Sana’s pocket, the other in her own, the two of them sticking close to the shoreline. It’s nearly eleven.

“Do you have work tomorrow?” Sana’s gaze flickers to Mina’s face, and the other girl is already looking at her, slow and soft. They’ve reached a part of the boardwalk that’s deserted - too far away from the pavilion to entertain anyone but cyclists. 

Instead of answering, Mina leans up into the space in front of Sana, cups a hand around Sana’s jaw, and presses her lips to hers. It’s a soft one, slow and steady, and Sana lets herself fall into it for a moment, pulling Mina in with arms slung behind her back. 

Then Mina is breaking away, a knowing smile on her face. Sana feels herself flush all the way to her ears. Loosens her hold on Mina, and lets her step back.

“I don’t think you know it, but you were asking yourself a question the whole night,” Mina says, and she doesn’t look angry at all. Only fond, somehow, like Sana hasn’t been a selfish fool this evening. “I hope this has given you an answer.”

  
  


There’s a cyclist outside the bus window on the way home, tail light glowing dimly in the night. Sana drifts between waking and sleeping, the feeling of Mina’s lips still lingering.

(“Night cycling.”

Sana had laughed then, at how serious Dahyun looked. That she’d paused digging into the bingsu to answer.

“I thought it’d be something a little more dangerous than that, like paragliding. Or sky diving. Maybe fighting a tiger in its cage?” Dahyun chortled a little at that, eyes curving into crescents. Head cocking.

“You know I’m scared of heights.”

“And not of the dark?”

“There’ll be lights,” Dahyun said, rolling her eyes. Looked down at her spoon, features softening. “And you could be beside me.”)

 

∞

 

 **Subject** : Janggun 2

[MRBIGDOG.jpg]

I went on a double date with Chaeng, Tzuyu, and their friend from Hong Kong today. They came over to my house and played with Janggun, and then everyone got really tired after that.

Her name is Elkie. We’ve decided to be friends, because I got scared and said that I wasn’t looking for anything more right now. 

I don’t know. I think I’m still waiting for you, somehow, without knowing. Waiting, but also living. I think that’s okay for now, and one day I’ll stop, and you’ll just be there, too, living alongside me.

 

∞

 

When Sana gets home, her mother is waiting for her, fallen asleep watching TV on the couch. It’s a rerun of a show that Sana had caught with her before she even left for Korea, and everything feels so different now. The sound of it. The shape of it. 

“I’m home,” Sana says, softly, and her mother jerks awake, remote falling from the couch, fall dampened by the carpet. 

Sana shakes her head, laughing, and her mother makes a little clawing motion for Sana to come over. Her voice is still heavy with sleep when her arms wrap around Sana’s neck, singing a lullaby into Sana’s ear, letting her squeeze her way onto the empty square on the couch, dirty clothes and all.

 

_Sleep, baby, sleep,_

_Oh, my baby, sleep,_

_How lovely, how lovely,_

_How nice you are!_

_Where's the nurse, where's the girl?_

_Where's your nurse girl?_

_She's gone, she's gone,_

_Far across the hill!_

_As a souvenir from her hometown,_

_What did she give you?_

_A toy drum and_

_A small bamboo flute._

 

Sana doesn’t notice the tears that’ve started to roll down her cheeks until her mother reaches out to catch them with her hands, thumb brushing gently against her cheeks.

“You’ve been so sad recently,” her mother says, and Sana stills against her hold. There are things that she has learned to hide, but only from people who haven’t known her her whole life. Only from people whom she hasn’t loved her whole life. Her mother’s eyes are warm even under the light of the TV.

“What did she give you?”

Sana thinks of yellow roses, a crumpled ticket to a piano rehearsal. Nights spent indoors, warming her hands against a small heater, Dahyun tinkering with her keyboard behind her. Dahyun’s voice when she forgot that Sana was around and sang to herself like no one was listening.

“Her heart,” Sana says, quietly, and lets herself break.

 

∞

 

 **Subject: RE:** Janggun 2

I hugged her on the doorstep, and then I didn’t follow her in. And then I walked out to the beach, watching the waves come in again and again, tearing away at one of the rocks on the shore, and I kept thinking of you. You were that to me, in a way, but you were putting me together instead of tearing me apart.

I think I’m tired of fighting it. 

 

∞

 

Sana is standing on Dahyun's doorstep at 8am in the morning, duffel bag slung over her shoulder, looking up into the viewer attached to the door. 

Dahyun opens the door.

“I was trying to figure out if I loved you because I did or because you were there,” Sana says, without preamble. She’s in a simple cream pullover and jeans, hair tousled by the wind, watch on the wrong wrist.

Dahyun blinks back at her.

“I wanted to find out if I was just making you my home because there was nothing else for me here.”

The sun is rising over the horizon, casting Sana in a morning glow. “And what did you find?”

Sana shakes her head. She walks past the threshold, puts her coat on the clothes rack, and sits down on the couch.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Sana-ssi,” Dahyun says, quietly. It feels like the earth is turning on its axis, but adjusting so that everything is upright again. 

Janggun comes bounding out from the kitchen, and Sana startles before letting out a loud laugh, allowing him to settle into her lap. "He's gotten so big," she says, awe in her voice, already scratching him under the chin, and Dahyun thinks that things are still the same, somehow, even if they're so different now. “Or maybe it was just that the pictures you sent me gave me a poor perception, which is also possible, because -”

"Unnie," Dahyun says, softly. "What are you doing here?"

Sana sucks in a breath. Looks down at the floor.

“A position opened up. Bilateral relations manager. It sounds really stupid, and I’ll only be here half the time, but -”

"What are you doing here, Sana?" Dahyun asks, again, and feels her own voice tremble.

"I love you," Sana says, eyes bright. “Just because. Not as a crutch, or a makeshift home.” She's looking at Dahyun without fear, or hesitation, or uncertainty, hands folded in her lap. She's making an offer, Dahyun realizes, running here from where she was, stumbling into her front door. Knocking twice, and then thrice, like she couldn’t be patient. 

And all Dahyun need do is accept. The morning light catches on Sana’s lashes when she looks up. Her eyes are wide in wonder, like she can’t believe Dahyun’s in front of her. 

Dahyun’s throat is dry.

“Did you take it for me?”

Sana blinks.

“The job, did you-”

“Yes,” Sana says, softly, voice breaking. Takes Dahyun’s hands in her own, and presses her cheek to them. It’s warm. “For you.”

 

∞

 

The couch is the last to be fitted into the new apartment. It’s a little smaller than Sana’s previous one, wrangled at a price that’s considerably low for the short notice.

Tzuyu’s unpacking the boxes in the living room, and Sana is walking there to take over, because that’s _enough help, more than enough,_ and Dahyun catches her by the door, hand on her wrist, pulling her in behind the wall, presses her into the wall next to the open doorway.

Dahyun kisses her because she can, again and again. Later, when the rest of them have left - Nayeon shooting them the filthiest look - against the kitchen counter, next to the windowsill, the sun going down behind Sana. Light blanketing the face she makes, wide-eyed and wondrous. 

 

The balcony in this apartment is a little cramped, but it’s enough for them to drag two chairs out to face the dark sky, Dahyun’s hand in Sana’s, the concrete jungle stretching out beneath them.

“I love you,” Sana says, into Dahyun’s shoulder. It’s a wonder to say it, still, somehow, and Sana wants to tell her forever. Until the sun sets and rises a thousand times, and even more than that.

“You have me,” Dahyun replies, softly, and maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe it’s something even more wondrous than that, makes Sana’s eyes widen with something that Dahyun can’t begin to name.

So Sana leans over, presses a kiss to the skin under Dahyun’s collar, soft and slow. Slips a hand under the hem of her jacket and pullover and shirt languidly, thumbing at the skin above Dahyun’s jeans. Commits the gasp that Dahyun lets out to memory.

Everything the tide swept away, and brought back into Sana’s hands.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the lullaby that sana's mother sang is the [edo komoruita](https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=838)
> 
> it's over! thank you to everyone who has read this little fic to the end and for all the comments that really helped me to fight to finish it t_t they are very very precious to me and i hope this fic has made you feel something in one way or another.

**Author's Note:**

> @[rainagaintmrw](https://twitter.com/rainagaintmrw)


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